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My Testimony

Rev. 12:11 And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.

I grew up in an emotionally detached family in Mustang, OK – a small suburb southwest of Oklahoma City.

I had 2 brothers – one older, one younger – and 2 parents who stuck together through the hardest of times.

They had both come from broken, alcoholic families – but those are their stories to tell. They had vowed they would never touch the stuff themselves.

And they kept the promise. Alcohol never saw the inside of our house. But we were not without problems.

My dad – whose approval I craved – was a “rageaholic”. He was angry a lot. Many times because my older brother and me didn’t clean the house. Other times because my mom would interfere when he disciplined me and my brother.

We went to church most Sunday mornings and occasionally Wednesday night at a Pentecostal “charismatic” church on the north side. Sundays were my favorite but also held some not so fond memories. It meant that we would probably go to Western Sizzlin or KFC – they had a lunch buffet that I loved. Sometimes we would also talk about going bowling as a family, although I can’t remember a time that we did. Usually, my parents would get into an argument – which were difficult to tune out – so we ended up back at home.

I was a “shy” kid. Everybody thought it was a natural thing that I didn’t talk to anybody. I was “like my mom”.

I hated school. Mockery and being made fun of was so common to me that I don’t remember a time from my school days when I wasn’t a punchline. But I did have one friend, that stuck with me through much of this, during elementary school.

In computer lab in 2nd grade, I had the first incident that made me a target. I was scared to ask if I could use the restroom. And my peers wouldn’t let me forget about it for years.

There were other traumatic events, but 2 stick out, later in school that would drive me to the world of fantasy, and eventually pornography. Both were in my 7th grade year and both haunted me and drove my obsessions until God finally helped me deal with them 20 years later, in the Celebrate Recovery program.

I had not yet felt the sting of a girl’s rejection, when I wrote my note passing friend from math class a poem and asked her to be my girlfriend. She didn’t like the idea, so she read it to the whole 7th grade at lunch.

Heartache and shame began to fill my life – and I was all alone. Not long after, my English teacher was called to the office one morning, and in her absence every other kid began throwing spitballs at me. There was one girl that didn’t. One girl that asked them all to stop.

And by God’s grace, that girl was probably the reason that I had not decided to do something much darker, much more permanent.

This would not be the end of my story. Not yet.

For the rest of my teen years, I took a journey deeper into whatever fantasies I could muster to escape the hell that was my life, at one point keeping a little black notebook I titled ‘Diary of a Madman’.

By this time, my family had gotten the latest tech- AOL.

It was 1996 and I was 12. It didn’t take long to find pornography with it. I had already been using newspaper ads and late night movies to fuel my fantasies and self-sex.

For the next 19 years of my life, pornography and self-sex were like an elevator I could jump on to escape the pain and shame that soaked my life, though as time wore on it fell into disrepair and worked less and less.

My junior year in high school, I stopped caring what everybody else thought. And it finally seemed as though I had no problem getting girlfriends. And I used them, relentlessly.

It felt as though there was nothing good left in me. My soul was black and beyond saving.

But God was playing the long game.

Not long after I began living on my own, He got me into a Church of Christ where self-centeredness didn’t appear all that unusual, though there were good people there too.

I heard the gospel and I was baptized in October 2003. I had met my wife on AOL in March of that year and by then she was coming to church with me. She was a traumatized borderline and I was a traumatized porn addict. As it turned out, we had all the perfect triggers for each other.

Our relationship has been transformed since then and is still improving, but it has been a road littered with pain, suffering, anger and lust.

I like to think that God put us together.

Talking to my counselor in 2014, I discovered my motivation was misguided. I wish with all my heart that I could say it was love, but I would be lying. It wasn’t.

I was trying to save her from her family and prove that I was worthy of love. He told me it was actually a form of narcissism. I was shocked. Narcissism was people that were super confident and had it all – and let everybody know about it.

Well that wasn’t me.

But Where Are The Nine?

One of the chief causes of division in Christendom is what we believe about faith and works.

Does God require both for salvation? What works does He require? Is a system of salvation that requires works futile or is it necessary?

I believe the key to these questions lies in Matthew 5:3, the very first sentence of Jesus’ ‘sermon on the Mount’.
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
In order to understand God’s teaching about faith and works, let us first seek to define our relationship to God.
Jesus qualifies our state, every one of us, in Matthew 5:3. Blessed are the “poor” in spirit.
The image Jesus gives of man’s state before God could not be clearer than it is here.
‘poor’ here refers to “a beggar (as cringing), that is, pauper (strictly denoting absolute or public mendicancy”. – Strong
There was no one lower than the beggar. This was one who, being blind or lame, *had no choice* but to beg and throw himself on the mercy of those who would give.

Furthermore, in the preceding chapter, the writer says this of Jesus: that “He came preaching ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'”

The kingdom…

If there is a kingdom, then there is a king.

We, then, are beggars. And He is the king.

What works, then, will we offer Him?

Perhaps it isn’t works, per se, that He wants from us.

What does He want?

Luke 17:11-18 may help us answer this.

11 Now on his way to Jerusalem,Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosymet him. They stood at a distance13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master,have pity on us!”

14 When he saw them, he said,“Go, show yourselves to the priests.”And as they went, they were cleansed.

15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising Godin a loud voice.16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

17 Jesus asked,“Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?18 Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?”19 Then he said to him,“Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

9 lepers did exactly what Jesus commanded and followed the law. And fell short.